Reading 08
Corporate personhood refers to a company’s status as a “person” with respect to the constitution. Should corporations be treated as fully human, meaning that they are entitled to a freedom of speech and religious expression even though they can’t face certain consequences to negative actions such as jail time? An aspect of the question of corporate personhood is determining where the line between an employee’s thoughts, words, actions, and work and those of the corporation’s. Where are they the words of the individual and where are they the words of the company? Can they even be the words of the company if it isn’t a “person” in the eyes of the state? Legally, many corporations have recently been granted the right to discriminate based on religious beliefs of owners of the company. As companies garner advanced personhood status we start to question what responsibilities accompany the higher power? Do they have a responsibility to give back to the community? Are they required to respect other corporations or “persons?”
Some people argue that there is no voice or action of the overarching company. As The Consumerist puts it, “Their actions and inactions are the sum total of the actions and inactions of their members.” Many don’t believe in corporate personhood and instead think that the expectations of a company’s morality is really just an expectation of it’s employee’s, or at the very least, those with an influential voice within the organization.
I think there is a lot truth to this because employees represent their company and vice versa. Generally speaking, it is assumed that you work at a company who’s values at least primarily align with your own. A devout Catholic is probably not going to work at Planned Parenthood. When your company strays too far from what you believe I think it is totally fair and even encouraged to speak up and even quit in extreme cases. Companies won’t always adopt the views of each of their employees, but it is important to at least voice concerns. As noted in the Wired article, it is often hard to sway the upper management of a corporation when a big chunk of revenue is at stake. That being said, Wired also acknowledges that the tech world has to be more open to adopting employee’s ideals. “Silicon Valley’s recruiting pitch has long been: Work with us to change the world. Employees are encouraged to make their work life synonymous with their social identity, and many internalize those utopian ideals.” Tech workers have a great deal of leverage as a result of their highly marketable skills. The power is often times there, especially when in numbers. The question remains, how are people going to actionize that power? And will they?
In the Muslim Registry case study I think tech workers and companies are absolutely within their rights to refuse to work on the database. People see a very real mode of discrimination that could affect a huge portion of the population and can definitely refuse to play a role in its creation. To force people to work on something they disagree with would be insane and quite frankly, terrifying. Decisions like this I think have to be made by both the company and the people that comprise it. Corporations are influenced by their people but can’t have the stance of every last member.
I think I like the idea of corporate personhood because when moral decisions need to be made at a scale above the personal employee level, there really needs to be a set of principals the company abides by. In addition to getting many of the rights people do (which I do think companies would end up getting regardless of “person” status), they get a lot of the responsibilities that people do. When you look at a company as an entity with a voice and certain rights, it is no longer just a money-driven machine. You now get a layer of ethical responsibility towards other people and the community. In the case of the Muslim Registry, companies may have a financial inclination towards agreeing to do it but they also need to remember how their work will affect the people of the US.
